1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to instant messaging technology.
2. Background Art
The emergence and development of computer networks and protocols, including the World Wide Web (or simply “the web”), allows many remote users to communicate with one another. Different types of communication tools have been developed for computer networks which allow users to communicate in different ways. One popular type of communication tool is instant messaging (also called chat). Instant messaging (IM) allows users to communicate over a network in real time. A user uses a client program (called an IM client) that communicates with other IM clients over the network. The IM client has a graphical user-interface (GUI) that allows a user to input text and view text.
IM communication has generally involved typing text. For example, two users chatting may type lines of text in each of their IM client programs. The lines of text may resemble a conversation in that successive lines of text are displayed in a temporal sequence along with an indication of the user who typed the text. Often this indication of the user is a display of the user's screen name (also called an IM address). IM clients have historically had simple GUIs with rectangular window displays in which the text of a chat is made to scroll as the conversation proceeds.
In most cases, a user (e.g. a sender) types in a message and sends it to a recipient, and the recipient is able to view the message almost instantaneously. However, no indication is provided to the sender to indicate that the message was indeed seen by the recipient. For example, a user may send a time sensitive or mission critical message assuming that it has been viewed by the recipient because of its near instantaneous transmittal time. However, the recipient may not view the message until some time in the future. In such situations, it is difficult for a sender to determine if the message has been correctly received and timely viewed by its intended recipient.
Therefore, what is needed is a system, method and computer program product that transmits and receives instant messages in a manner that overcomes the limitations of existing IM techniques.